The rapid proliferation of digital images has increased the need to classify images for easier retrieving, reviewing, and albuming of the images. The same need applies to other types of capture records, such as video sequences, audio sequences, and combinations of image and sound records.
Pictorial images and other captured records are often classified by event, for convenience in retrieving, reviewing, albuming, and otherwise manipulating the records. Manual and automated methods have been used. In some cases, images and other records have been further classified by dividing events into subevents. Further divisions are sometimes provided.
Although the presently known and utilized methods for partitioning images are satisfactory, there are drawbacks. Manual classification is effective, but is slow and burdensome unless the number of images is small. Automated methods are available, but tend to have a number of constraints, such as inherent inaccuracy due to lack of consistency, flexibility, and precision. Some automated methods partition images into groups having similar image characteristics based upon color, shape or texture. This approach can be used to classify by event, but is inherently difficult when used for that purpose.
Many images are accompanied by metadata, that is, associated non-image information that can be used to help grouping the images. One example of such metadata is chronological data, such as date and time, and geographic data, such as Global Positioning System (“GPS”) geographic position data. These types of data can be used to group by location and can also be used for grouping by event, since events are usually limited both temporally and spatially. Users have long grouped images manually by looking at each image and sorting by chronology and geography. “Home Photo Content Modeling for Personalized Event-Based Retrieval”, Lim, J-H, et al., IEEE Multimedia, Vol. 10(4), October-December 2003, pages 28-37 suggests use of chronological and geographic data in automated image classification by event using image content.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2001/0017668A1, filed by Wilcock et al., discloses augmenting image recordings with location information determined from transmitted geolocation signals and with date/time stamps and other metadata. Time stamps of image recordings and location information are correlated with user intervention where needed. The metadata can include semantic information, which is described as a user-meaningful location description.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,571 discloses a searchable database, in which a query about a particular region of interest retrieves images having associated location data within a map boundary determined for that particular region of interest.
In the above patent references, images are tied to geographic location information and preexisting map regions. The above patent references do not differentiate images in relation to different ranges of geographic areas. This is shortcoming, since many people tend to take pictures over different ranges of geographic area. Some sequences of pictures are taken within a small area. An example is pictures taken at home within a house and yard or at the house of a friend or neighbor. Other sequences span large areas. An example is pictures taken on a vacation trip. Similar results are seen for other captured records, such as video sequences.
It would thus be desirable to provide image organization that groups images and relates images to a map, but that more closely matches picture taking over different ranges of geographic areas.